


Fairynheit 451

by Anonymouspotato



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Artagan is Caleb’s Uncle AU, Changeling!Caleb, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Feytouched!Jester, Gen, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23354575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymouspotato/pseuds/Anonymouspotato
Summary: In which Caleb has wings, Jester has magic eyes, and Artagan has a sister. It’s...a weird ride.
Relationships: Caleb Widogast & Yasha, Jester Lavorre & Caleb Widogast, Jester Lavorre & The Traveler, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 17
Kudos: 95





	Fairynheit 451

**Author's Note:**

> Blame the WJ discord for the positivity atrocious pun.

Artagan grinned, and skipped briskly through the forests of the Feywild. He had had a good day spoiling the milk and dampening the hay of Syngorn, so overall, he was feeling pretty good about life, if as bored as usual. He stepped through a hedge and emerged in a meadow with two downy hammocks strung between tall purple trees. There were berries that tasted different depending on the phases of the moons, and a pool. And sitting next to it was a slender figure.

She was lean and limber, like the trees that surrounded them, with his same fiery red hair and bushy eyebrows. Her eyes were different, though - they were bright, impossible blue.

“Una.”

His sister smiled, and turned toward him. “Brother dear. How was your day?”

“Spectacular, If I do say so myself. And you?”

She sighed dramatically, and gestured to the pool. Reflected in its surface was a tall, broad, pale man, with a full brown beard and a playful twinkle in his eyes that made him rather attractive. “The same as usual.”

“He will burn out in a few short decades. And you will never meet him.”

“I know, but... _ Leofric Ermendrud.” _ She rolled the name around like a mouthful of diamonds. Then she sighed again, and approached one of the hammocks. Her tiny butterfly wings rose and fell as she laid down and her breathing slowed. “One day, I shall find my way to him. And I’ll take you along with me.” She grinned with the promise of chaos. “So many oblivious people. They won’t know what hit them.”

Artagan grinned, and placed himself in the other hammock delicately. “A fantastic dream indeed. Goodnight, sister,”

“Goodnight, brother.”

Three days later, Una was gone. 

It was some time before he wondered if the pool might show him. Fey were not loving creatures by nature, but Artagan supposed If he could feel anything approximating love, that was how he felt about Una. 

He traced his finger across the surface of the pool in a shape vaguely resembling her face. The water shimmered and swirled, and what had been impossibly clear was now pearlescent and opaque. 

His sister was there in the pool, but not as she had been. Her vibrant pigments were dull and mortal, and there were actual lines under her eyes. Her elegant Feywild silks has been replaced with a rough, simple farm dress. And she was talking to a baby boy with fiery tufts of hair and vibrant blue eyes and already bushy eyebrows and molting mothlike wings.

Una resisted every temptation to use her Faeric charms to seduce the man she’d watched from afar. She didn’t know how she had done it, but she did. And then, she told him of her true nature. 

He was...shocked. Upset. A little betrayed. But they had dealt with it, and moved on.

And then, they’d had a son. 

She’d wanted to name him  _ Gálimæ, _ Sylvan for ‘Hope’, but ultimately decided it was too suspicious. They settled on Bren, from the Zemnian word  _ Brennen, _ for the fiery hair he’d inherited from her.

They never quite hid his heritage from Bren, but they kept it under wraps. Una lived in fear of the hissing accusations of  _ Changeling! Monster! Half-breed! _ that would follow her son. She hid his Feywild features under layers of Illusion magic no mortal caster could break. She taught him Sylvan by candlelight after the farm work was done, and conversations in the Ermendrud house slipped between two native tongues. 

_ “Mutter.” _ He said one day.  _ “Sah falíth leàfn Akasten.”  _ ‘I want to learn magic.’

_ “Sah gálimæ seh nafê.” _ “I hope you do.’

Marion sighed, and ran a hand down her front. She would start to show soon, and had no easy solution to hide her pregnancy. The magic to do so alluded her; Even her innate Fiendish heritage offered no solution. Her child would get them both cast out on the streets.

“Darling?” She turned over in bed to face her paramour for the night, a short man with black hair, lavender eyes, and a good sense of humor. “Something on your mind?”

“Just plans for the future.”

“They wouldn’t happen to involve your little girl, would they?”

Her fiery blood ran cold, but she maintained her façade. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Your skill in deception is admirable. I can help with your upcoming dilemma.”

“...What do you require?”

The man smiled - she just now realized she’d never caught his name. “A week of your undivided attention, and no one will know the child is there.”

“Deal.”

When her beautiful daughter is born months later, she has a twinkling grin, and lavender eyes.

He did it.

Her Bren, her little firestarter, had a talent for the arcane. One evening, he raced home with a book he had obviously stolen under his arm, and he summoned a tiny flame in the palm of his hand.

Leofric lifted him up by the armpits and sang in bright, beautiful Zemnian. Una joined in - her grasp of the language was passable, if limited. Bren stole tiny pieces of magic with all the mischief and joy of something half-Wild, and she couldn’t be more proud.

And then, a man in grand, ridiculous Imperial robes came to town, and asked if he’d like to attend the Soltryce Academy, free of charge.

What answer could they give other than ‘Yes’?

A carriage came to take him, carrying a small blond girl and a broad dark boy. They waved goodbye to their son with tears of joy in their eyes, knowing that his future was bright indeed.

Bren could not believe his own luck.

He had spent so long aching to be noticed, to be recognized, to live up to what his mother and father had expected of him. And here he was, one of three chosen to apprentice under Master Ikithon of the Cerberus Assembly himself!

They had been studying and adjusting for three days - the Master said tomorrow would be their first real day of training. After the four had eaten a sparse but delicious dinner, Ikithon asked to speak with Bren privately.

“Yes, Master Ikithon?” He fought his slouch as he stood in front of Trent’s finely carved mahogany desk.

“Bren, my boy. I had some questions for you.”

Ikithon laced his fingers together. “Are you familiar with Tieflings? Aasimars?”

“I have heard of them, and know some things about them, though I cannot say I have given them much dedicated study.” He’d learned quickly it was best to be very polite in the master’s presence. 

“They are the result of Extraplanar creatures intermingling with mortal bloodlines. The Abyss and the Nine Hells in the former case. The Celestial Realms in the latter.” He grinned like oil and old cologne. “I have never met such a creature who was the product of the Feywild.”

He snapped. And the illusion around Bren dispelled.

His red hair grew more saturated, and began to twist and snap like a crackling fireplace. His eyes almost seemed to glow azure blue, and the black of his pupils leaked into his sclera. His already bushy eyebrows overgrew even further. His ears elongated, not quite Elven, but definitely not Human. Black and orange moth wings, too small to fly with, extended from his back.

“M-Master, I-”

“Calm yourself. I don’t blame you for hiding from the fanatical rabble. I do, however, blame you for keeping something from me. I require...any apology, of sorts.”

“Master, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know you-”

“Not a literal apology, you stupid boy.” Ikithon rose from his seat, and looked Bren up and down like a piece of beef he was considering purchasing. “Take off your shirt.”

Bren did it. There was something cold and sharp in Trent’s voice that sent chills up his spine.

Ikithon ran one rough fingertip down the inside of his spine, right next to the base of one wing. “Fascinating.” He poked and prodded. Observed. In the end, nothing much happened, but Bren still went to bed with a crawling sense of nauseous dread up his spine.

They trained, and learned, and trained, and learned. It was long, and hard, and worth it.

Trent forbid him from hiding his true appearance, but Wulf and Astrid didn’t care much. If anything, they found it intriguing.

They couldn’t speak Zemnian, and he  _ definitely _ couldn’t speak Sylvan. Conversations were to be held in Common only. He sometimes couldn’t stop himself from muttering in his mother and father tongues in the dead of night, but he allowed himself that one small rebellion.

And then it all came crashing down. He was on sabbatical back home, in the familiar golden waves of the Zemni fields. And he heard something he simply couldn’t unhear.

He didn’t like it. But he knew what he had to do.

Una didn’t know what was happening. There was fire, and smoke, and pain. So much pain. Leofric was trying unsuccessfully to open the door as the crimson licks of pain inched ever closer. And then she heard screaming outside. Familiar screaming.

She looked out the window, and saw her son, who had been so rigid and cold and distinctly un-Wild when they’d last seen each other.

He was on his knees. Something red and smoky was rising from his back. Where his wings were. 

No. No, no, no no nonononononono-

Leofric fell, wheezing. And Una fell too.

No, not fell. Stumbled. Back to the land of her birth.

Artagan laughed as Genevieve drew another dick on the doorway to her mother’s chambers. It would be scrubbed off soon enough, but he got the feeling the maids would give up sooner or later, if they did it enough times. He was already so excited to see what she would grow into, given enough time and-

Something was wrong with Una.

He didn’t know how he knew. He just did. Some long forgotten fraternal instinct swelled up in him, and he disappeared into the Feywild.

Gennie was used to his comings and goings. She’d understand. He hadn’t checked on his sister in...almost 17 years now. Whatever had happened to her?

He got his answer as soon as he exited the door Vox Machina had so kindly built for him in his little glade. Lying on the ground like a tar stain on the plane, the broken, burnt, half dead boy of his sister was spread out in a morbid tableau.

“Oh, Una. What has become of you?”

Una’s one not-melted eye looked over to him. “My...my son.” She wheezed in a thin, lonely voice. “Something’s happened to my son.”

Oh, right. He was an uncle. That would take some getting used to.

Artagan lifted Una’s body, and laid her down in the pool. She broke apart into ash and seafoam, a name that now felt like an ironic omen on her lips.

When Bren next had enough presence of mind to see, his first sight was the hole symbol of the Archeart.

God of light, beauty, art, creation. God of the Fey. Hah.

He bided his time, and eventually, he escaped into the wilderness around the complex he would later learn was called the Vergessen Sanatorium. 

_ ‘Vater, Es tut mir Leid. Mahdè, Sah Gleathsim. I will fix this.’ _

His wings had melted into tattered remnants of their former selves. He was bald and tired and skinny as a stick. Good. He had performed unspeakable acts. He deserved nothing less.

Not-Bren’s companionship came in three steps. Step one was a cat.

_Cat._ _Katze. Sihal._ Whatever you called it.

It took time and labor, as all things did, but he did it. He set up the materials, and reached out to the home away from home he had never visited. He pleaded for companionship, and for once, his prayers were answered. A cat/Katze/sihal all his own. 

Not-Bren named him Frumpkin, buried his fingers in the soft ginger fur, and slept a little bit soundly for the first time in 216 days, 17 hours, and 24 minutes.

Jester (she’d decided on her Virtue Name when she was 7, but she’d only now gotten to claim it) loved the Traveler’s stories more than almost anything else in the world. She had ever since they’d first met. He had told her so many, from so many places, with so many people. But lately, there was one that had gripped her imagination like an iron talon.

“Traveler.” She wriggled under the covers like a cocooning caterpillar. “Tell me about the Feywild again, please?”

The Traveler, who was currently in the shape of a green kitten, curled up against her side and purred. “Of course, Jester dear. What would you like to hear about?”

“Tell me the whale carcass story again?”

He laughed, a clear bellish sound that made her glow with pride. “Oh, I do so love that one.”

He launched into a dramatic recreation, complete with animated pictures on the walls. By the time it was over, her consciousness was beginning to ebb.

Jester yawned. “Traveler? Will you take me to the Feywild someday?”

“I hope so, Jester. You carry a spark of it with you.” He traced a gentle fingernail over one of her eyelids. “And I would love nothing more than to paint Syngorn red with you at my side.”

“I’d love that, too.”

Step two came after Not-Bren was caught pickpocketing some apples when he was on the verge of starving. He was on the nimbler side, but only by a little, and he was long out of practice with misdirection and trickery. He’s spent 11 years catatonic-you’d have to forgive him.

Not-Bren was tossed into a cell in the most pokey jail he’d ever seen (and he’d grown up in Blumenthal) with a bundle of rags that revealed itself 2 hours and 31 minutes later to be a little Goblin girl.

“I’m Nott.”

“I’m Caleb.”

They’d both thought they were using aliases. Life would prove to complicate matters.

They escaped with his magic (Zauberei, Akasten), her crossbow (Armbrust, Kelgathen), and the skin of their teeth (no translations needed). And Not-Bren, Caleb now, realized 3 days, 14 hours, 6 minutes, and 43 seconds later that he had made a friend.

Jester smiled and leaned across the table, watching intently as Beau sorted the coins, the metal chips glimmering like so many stars against the muddy wooden sky of the table. She hummed a melody her mother used to sing under her breath, before she caught sight of someone sitting at the corner table out of the corner of her eye.

Her jaw dropped.

The man in the corner seemed caught between two forms, like both of her eyes were seeing different versions of him. To one, he was a grubby Human man with red hair, pale skin, a grubby longcoag, and several days of beard. To the other, he was a grubby ethereal creature with fiery hair, black eyes, pointed ears, and tattered wings. The world seemed to bend around him in a way that made her want to ignore him, but she was too fascinated by the duality of his appearence.

She pushed away from the table and walked across the room, knocking on the wood in front of the stranger and his companion. “Are you guys staying here?”

Step three was probably the trickiest. A little Goblin girl was one thing. A little Goblin girl plus a half-Orc, two Humans, and two Tieflings who both seemed to have a strange fascination with him? That was another matter entirely.

Their party - The Mighty Nein, he chuckled to himself - weren’t a bad group of companions by any means. Under other circumstances, Caleb probably would have liked them. But under current circumstances, it was more than a little overwhelming.

He knew Nott well enough by this point that little she did surprised him, but he couldn’t constantly fight against her drinking problem, which was bad when they met and had gotten steadily worse over the months. He didn’t yet know what to make of Fjord or Yasha. Beau was, put simply, an asshole, if a well meaning one. Molly was the most colorful enigma he’d ever met.

And then, there was Jester. Who, for whatever reason, couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him when she didn’t think he was looking.

She was bright, but not in the same way people had said he was bright. Jester seemed to waltz through life like she was glowing, effervescent and gold like champagne and young heady dreams. He felt himself pulled into her orbit like she was a magnet and he a piece of rusted iron. Why would he not reach out to something so bright and clear, when he was so murky with the sludge of his past?

In hindsight, he shouldn’t have been surprised when the pull led him downward and downward, until he started to fall.

Yasha wasn’t curious by nature. She had learned in her youth that the untraveled road could be prosperous, but it was likely to kill you before you reached the vital moment. But something about Caleb made her ears perk up in interest.

Her questions were answered one day, after her tattered wings emerged shamefully from their hiding place beneath her skin. Caleb approached her and spoke in the tongue of angles, that had etched itself into her bones. 

That night she asked him;  _ “If I am an angel, then what are you?”  _ (There wasn’t really a way to translate Celestial and keep its layers and layers of meanings.)

Caleb looked at his shoes.  _ “It is hard to explain.” _

_ “Could you try?” _

He sighed.  _ “I am no angel, Yasha. Far from it.” _ And his body shifted in a flicker of motion and light.

_ “Ah. I see. Thank you, Caleb. I won’t tell anyone.” _

_ “Thank you, Yasha. Good night.” _

She wouldn’t lie. It raised more questions than answers.

Jester sighed and leaned back against the side of the cart, taking out her sketchbook. She dipped her fingers in vivid ink and spread them across the pages in colorful dips and swirls, leaving curlicues of color on the thick creamy pages. There were still faint bruises on her wrist from the manacles that had bound her in the dank darkness until only a few days ago. The sun was setting in a brilliant display as she arched her fingers across the pages. 

She heard quiet shuddering and looked up from her project. Caleb was lying on his side, Nott curled up against his chest. She had learned pretty quick that the rest of the Nein only saw Human Caleb, and not the fiery being with tattered wings she could make out between blinks.

He was stirring in his sleep, and muttering in a language she did not know.  _ “Madhè, grim wighaysen. Grim. Parhè, madhè. Sah gleathsim. Sah gleathsim íll.” _

Jester reached out and covered Caleb’s hand with her own, smearing his white and grey flesh deep purple-pink. He stirred for a moment, eyes cracking slightly, before settling into sleep once more. 

Satisfied, Jester closed her book and wiped her fingers off on her pants leg, an old Infernal lullaby her mother had composed filtering through her lips.

Time passed. They moved from land to sea to land again, through the woods and underground. And when they had once been on the run with nothing more than a one to protect them from the elements, now they had a house and more free time than they knew what to do with. Caleb sank further into his sheets, propping his head up as he read.

It was a book on the history of the Feywild, from the first Eladrin that crawled out of its glimmering greens, to the eternal Elven city that existed both there and here at once. Nowhere did he find anything on what he was.

Frustrated, he dropped the illusion that wrapped around him like a rusted shell, and stared at his face - his real face - in the mirror. Even Beau and Nott were still unaware of what he was. The only one who did had no room to 

“Caaaaayleeeeeeb!”

He whipped around. Jester was standing in the doorway, arm up and leg kicked out into a diagonal line, art supplies cradled near her chest. She took about three seconds to stare at him, her smile shifting into a quizzical pout (Gods, did he hate how that stabbed a part of his heart he thought he’d long ago excised), before her characteristic grin returned, both brighter and gentler. “You aren’t wearing the illusion.”

The floor fell out from under him as his stomach swooped. Caleb could feel his chest tightening like he was pinched between two giant fingers, squeezing and squeezing until there was nothing left of him to crush. Jester dropped her paints (some of the jars might have broken, what had he done) and walked over, liking her cool, blue, pigment-flecked fingers with his bony, soot-stained ones. “Caleb, it’s okay. I didn’t tell anyone, I promise. Your secret’s safe with me.” She giggled.

He felt himself recentering, the world returning to its axis. If it was Jester, lollipop sweet Jester, he could live with it. A question was nagging at the back of his mind. “How did you know?”

“Oh, I could see it since we met. I just figured you wanted to keep it a secret because you never told anyone. Does anyone else know?”

“Just Yasha...and some people I’d rather you never meet. How do you see through it?l

“I don’t know, I just can.” She scratched at her temple. “Are you a fairy, Caleb?”

He shrugged. “Of sorts, I guess.”

“The Traveler said I’ve been touched by the Feywild, which, I mean, doesn’t make a  _ whole _ lot of sense, but that might explain it.”

Caleb’s eyes widened. His mother had told him stories about people like that. The Faetouched, the Fairystruck, the Wildclaimed. People who’d been exposed to a great deal of Fae magic early in their lives, perhaps even before they’d been born. Perhaps it had been the Traveler’s doing. “That could be it, ja. Never mind all that. Did you need something, Jester?”

“Oh, yeah!” She picked up her paints. “I was wondering if you’d want to help me make a painting on the back of the house! I was thinking of a doorway for the Traveler.”

“I’m not much of an artist, Jester.”

“You’ll be fine. You know, I think you’d like the Traveler, Caleb. C’mon!”

Caleb smiled, rolling his eyes fondly and twisting his wrist, putting the itchy sweater of his fake face back on. “Oh, alright.”

Jester ran her fingers along the insides of Caleb’s shoulder blades, tracing curling vines with her blunted nail. “And you can’t fly with them or anything?”

“Nein. They aren’t large enough to support my weight. I can...glide, I suppose, but not much more.”

“I bet you’ll figure out how to fly someday, Cayleb.”

“I guess that’s the dream, eh?”

“It’s not a dream if you can do it. It’s a goal.”

“Fair enough.”

“You’d learn to fly for me, wouldn’t you?”

“For you, Jester?” Caleb smiled. “I would move the world itself.”


End file.
